Social Europe

politics, economy and employment & labour

  • Themes
    • European digital sphere
    • Recovery and resilience
  • Publications
    • Books
    • Dossiers
    • Occasional Papers
    • Research Essays
    • Brexit Paper Series
  • Podcast
  • Videos
  • Newsletter

The feminist building-blocks of a just, sustainable economy

Jayati Ghosh 15th November 2021

Jayati Ghosh finds in a UN Women report a blueprint for an economy which serves the public—rather than the other way around.

economy,economists,economics,UN Women,feminism,feminist
Many women around the world—as with these traders in Liberia—work in the informal economy (ImageArc/shutterstock.com)

Feminist economists have long argued that the purpose of an economy is to support the survival and flourishing of life, in all its forms. This may seem obvious but it turns on its head the prevailing view, which implicitly assumes the opposite causation: the economy runs according to its own laws, which must be respected by mere human actors. In this market-fundamentalist perspective, it is a potential angry god which can deliver prosperity or devastation and must be placated through all sorts of measures—including sacrifices made in its name.  

Yet the economy, its markets and its various institutional forms are human creations, which can also be revised and reshaped according to democratic will. That means economic policies can and should be aligned with social and environmental goals.

This used to be seen as a rather wishful, even eccentric, view. But the pandemic and the emergent threats posed by climate change and other ecological destruction have given it more resonance. Even so, the basic idea can seem a bit woolly and unstructured—full of good intent rather than practical strategies for implementation.

Now UN Women has produced a Feminist Plan for Sustainability and Social Justice, which puts much-needed flesh on the bare bones of a feminist approach to the economy, relevant to the contemporary world. It not only rehearses the well-known problems with how economies are functioning but provides clear guidelines for policy, at local, national and international levels. It is based on the goal of ensuring sustainable livelihoods for all, while enabling the equitable flowering of human potential in harmony with nature.

Our job is keeping you informed!


Subscribe to our free newsletter and stay up to date with the latest Social Europe content.


We will never send you spam and you can unsubscribe anytime.

Thank you!

Please check your inbox and click on the link in the confirmation email to complete your newsletter subscription.

.

Care work

Once it is accepted that economic policies must be put at the service of sustainability, gender equality and social justice, what follows? First, unpaid care work and the environment cannot be treated—as they effectively have been all this time—as limitless resources, which can be used for free and depleted without cost or consequence.

Instead, economic institutions and policies must not only recognise the contributions of care work and nature, but be directed towards socially valuing them and providing the conditions in which they will flourish. A priority of economic policy then becomes creation of decent jobs in strategic green sectors, such as care, agroecology and decentralised renewable energy.

Investing in care is absolutely essential, without treating it as a commodity, personal choice or family obligation. Rather, care work must be seen as a collective good to be adequately resourced and regulated, with expansion of affordable, quality care services which provide decent work to such workers. Social and financial support to unpaid caregivers must also be increased, including through paid family leave and universal child allowances.

Gender-sensitive

The institutions, regulations and policies that provide essential protection for labour, including collective-bargaining rights, living wages, decent working conditions and social protection, have to be strengthened, and the structures and systems made more gender-sensitive and responsive. Workers’ rights in the informal economy are particularly important, as women proliferate as small-scale farmers, domestic workers, home-based industrial outworkers, waste pickers, petty retail traders and food vendors. The expansion of gender-responsive social-protection systems has the macroeconomic advantage of boosting demand, even as it enables greater social resilience against future shocks—including those caused by the escalating environmental crisis.

The global food system is broken—unhealthy, environmentally disastrous and economically unequal. It needs to be rebuilt from the bottom up, so that it supports diverse crop production in sustainable ways for local, national and regional markets, provides food security for all, promotes biodiversity and ensures livelihood security especially for small producers, including women. 


We need your support


Social Europe is an independent publisher and we believe in freely available content. For this model to be sustainable, however, we depend on the solidarity of our readers. Become a Social Europe member for less than 5 Euro per month and help us produce more articles, podcasts and videos. Thank you very much for your support!

Become a Social Europe Member

We need rapid transitions to sustainable patterns of production and consumption to stave off the looming environmental catastrophe. Decentralised, renewable energy systems are now more feasible and can provide more jobs for women, while providing alternatives to polluting, ecologically-damaging, traditional cooking fuels and reducing the drudgery of unpaid care work.

Public-investment push

All this necessarily requires a big public-investment push, to enable economic recovery and lay the basis for structural transformation. That in turn demands a global architecture that allows nations to enlarge their ‘fiscal space’ through progressive macroeconomic policies and multilateral co-operation—especially through tax co-operation which ensures multinational companies and the wealthiest people contribute the most. Public spending in support of care and environmental preservation should be seen as part of global public investment, rather than as ‘aid’ or consumption.

Whenever there is talk of partnerships nowadays, the focus is on ‘public-private partnerships’, whereby governments underwrite the risks and subsidise the costs of corporate investment. But these need to prioritise people and the environment over profits, unlike the experience with Covid-19 vaccines. Also, it is just as important (if not more so) for governments to focus on families, community organisations and small businesses as interlocutors, so that states can promote innovation in all areas relevant to life and nature. 

Such enhanced involvement requires states to be more responsible and responsive, along with greater accountability for non-state actors, within and beyond national boundaries. Feminist movements and civil-society organisations are essential to counterbalance both state and market power, providing voice to marginalised and excluded groups—and they need to work in tandem. 

UN Women have offered us a clear and persuasive blueprint for what can be done. Now the task is to do it.

This is a joint publication by Social Europe and IPS-Journal

Jayati Ghosh

Jayati Ghosh teaches economics at the University of Massachusetts, having done so at Jawaharlal Nehru University for 34 years. She is executive secretary of International Development Economics Associates and a member of the Independent Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation.

Home ・ Economy ・ The feminist building-blocks of a just, sustainable economy

Most Popular Posts

schools,Sweden,Swedish,voucher,choice Sweden’s schools: Milton Friedman’s wet dreamLisa Pelling
world order,Russia,China,Europe,United States,US The coming world orderMarc Saxer
south working,remote work ‘South working’: the future of remote workAntonio Aloisi and Luisa Corazza
Russia,Putin,assets,oligarchs Seizing the assets of Russian oligarchsBranko Milanovic
Russians,support,war,Ukraine Why do Russians support the war against Ukraine?Svetlana Erpyleva

Most Recent Posts

Sakharov,nuclear,Khrushchev Unhappy birthday, Andrei SakharovNina L Khrushcheva
Gazprom,Putin,Nordstream,Putin,Schröder How the public loses out when politicians cash inKatharina Pistor
defence,europe,spending Ukraine and Europe’s defence spendingValerio Alfonso Bruno and Adriano Cozzolino
North Atlantic Treaty Organization,NATO,Ukraine The Ukraine war and NATO’s renewed credibilityPaul Rogers
transnational list,European constituency,European elections,European public sphere A European constituency for a European public sphereDomènec Ruiz Devesa

Other Social Europe Publications

The transatlantic relationship
Women and the coronavirus crisis
RE No. 12: Why No Economic Democracy in Sweden?
US election 2020
Corporate taxation in a globalised era

Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

Towards a new Minimum Wage Policy in Germany and Europe: WSI minimum wage report 2022

The past year has seen a much higher political profile for the issue of minimum wages, not only in Germany, which has seen fresh initiatives to tackle low pay, but also in those many other countries in Europe that have embarked on substantial and sustained increases in statutory minimum wages. One key benchmark in determining what should count as an adequate minimum wage is the threshold of 60 per cent of the median wage, a ratio that has also played a role in the European Commission's proposals for an EU-level policy on minimum wages. This year's WSI Minimum Wage Report highlights the feasibility of achieving minimum wages that meet this criterion, given the political will. And with an increase to 12 euro per hour planned for autumn 2022, Germany might now find itself promoted from laggard to minimum-wage trailblazer.


FREE DOWNLOAD

ETUI advertisement

Bilan social / Social policy in the EU: state of play 2021 and perspectives

The new edition of the Bilan social 2021, co-produced by the European Social Observatory (OSE) and the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI), reveals that while EU social policy-making took a blow in 2020, 2021 was guided by the re-emerging social aspirations of the European Commission and the launch of several important initiatives. Against the background of Covid-19, climate change and the debate on the future of Europe, the French presidency of the Council of the EU and the von der Leyen commission must now be closely scrutinised by EU citizens and social stakeholders.


AVAILABLE HERE

Eurofound advertisement

Living and working in Europe 2021

The Covid-19 pandemic continued to be a defining force in 2021, and Eurofound continued its work of examining and recording the many and diverse impacts across the EU. Living and working in Europe 2021 provides a snapshot of the changes to employment, work and living conditions in Europe. It also summarises the agency’s findings on issues such as gender equality in employment, wealth inequality and labour shortages. These will have a significant bearing on recovery from the pandemic, resilience in the face of the war in Ukraine and a successful transition to a green and digital future.


AVAILABLE HERE

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

EU Care Atlas: a new interactive data map showing how care deficits affect the gender earnings gap in the EU

Browse through the EU Care Atlas, a new interactive data map to help uncover what the statistics are often hiding: how care deficits directly feed into the gender earnings gap.

While attention is often focused on the gender pay gap (13%), the EU Care Atlas brings to light the more worrisome and complex picture of women’s economic inequalities. The pay gap is just one of three main elements that explain the overall earnings gap, which is estimated at 36.7%. The EU Care Atlas illustrates the urgent need to look beyond the pay gap and understand the interplay between the overall earnings gap and care imbalances.


BROWSE THROUGH THE MAP

About Social Europe

Our Mission

Article Submission

Membership

Advertisements

Legal Disclosure

Privacy Policy

Copyright

Social Europe ISSN 2628-7641

Social Europe Archives

Search Social Europe

Themes Archive

Politics Archive

Economy Archive

Society Archive

Ecology Archive

Follow us on social media

Follow us on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter

Follow us on LinkedIn

Follow us on YouTube